Tuesday, 24 February 2009

Sunday, 22 February 2009

Jørgen Vig Knudstorp #5 is out! Check it out on Jåm, or look around Brickspace at lunchtime today. If you want to download it, or for some reason your computer can't read PNG files, find the glorious JPEG (JørgenPEG) versions on my Flickr .

That takes me quite smoothly onto the subject of Flickr. I've managed to buy a Pro account, which means I can upload as much as I want, with videos too! The link to my page is above, and I've also set up a group for Saint Olave's, so if you are a student and have a Flickr account, join join join!

I have FINALLY posted The Instability on MOCpages, with the whole short story. I copied it all out. See here .

Tuesday, 17 February 2009

Well, I've taken dozens of pictures of the MOCs I made on Monday. Unfortunately, some of them need to be edited on Photoshop (which I don't have on my computer since Apple provided me with a crap computer with 1 gig of RAM, which can't run Photoshop!! ARGH!), so expect them later this week. As for now, none of them are on MOCpages, but they should be later. Here's a few previews of the best ones...

Thar be silhouettes a'brewing! Yar!
So I set up my big light filtering thing and shone my three Ikea lamps onto it, then posed some minifigs in front to make silhouettes. I'm not sure what I will use them for... maybe a MOCpages article, maybe some graphics for my website, maybe just to post on Flickr.

Faces will be added in, and the colour of their shirts will be changed. Two words: Bill. Murray.

A MOC I made on Sunday, and Luke helped me take some pictures of it yesterday. I've got a great gallery of pictures. They should be on Flickr and MOCpages in the next few days (well, on Flickr next month: I've reached my monthly allowance this month)

Yesterday's big Photoshop project. You could never tell that I only had one strip of flowers, and only one petal. It's all photoshopped, it took me AGES! I had to edit out the background on each strip, feather the edges, up the contrast and all that, then do the same with Timmy (the minifig), edit out the stick holding him up, fix his face and hair (half of which was missing: that damn magnetic lasso tool), then do the same with the flying petals (which was harder because where you saw the thin side of the petals, the magnetic lasso tool did not recognize this third dimension), and then motion blur them, feather the edges of EVERYTHING like, five times, add a nice blue sky, fiddle with the Curves, and ta-dah!

A little preview pic I took of one of my most ambitious projects ever. It has water in it. Yes, you heard right. Water. And - if you can guess what I photoshopped in this picture, I'll give you a penny.

Sunday, 15 February 2009

A: One hell of a complicated, unstable MOC. Today I thought 'hey, what a great idea: let's have under-MOC lighting!'. Why, self, WHY?!?!?

So this MOC is basically ALL my dark bley pieces wrapped around two long lines of clear bricks, to make two lines of (when lit from underneath) cool light. No walls though: I ran out of pieces. Dang.

B: Something with Bill Murray in it. I won't say any more than that. Nuh-uh, I'm not budging.

C: My biggest project: a MOC which will partly fill up with water. Yes, you heard right. It has a water tank-thing in it. It's AMAZING.

D: My first MOC of the day, and most failed one: a table with a plate and a Tomato Ketchup packet on it. Worthless.

E: I finally managed to to a Valentine's Day MOC, though a whole day late. It looks like a tiny MOC, that one, but the powers of Photoshop will show that a tiny MOC can become a large MOC. And some lurve included.

F: A WIP that I was gonna finish but sadly I didn't have enough time - or beige bricks - to do it today. It's a MOC dedicated to my History teacher, Mr Pendred.

So stay tuned for the pictures, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, I have no idea!

Monday, 9 February 2009

I haven't posted here recently, so I thought I'd give you an update just so you don't think I've run off to WordPress, which I nearly did.

Unfortunately, I've lost all motivation to finish off They stare, they stare, as the idea has come and gone and I grabbed it that one night when I wrote the first part, but after that I just didn't have all the inspiration. Expect more stories and poems from me anyway.

Also, if you are a Blogger or WordPress user and you like posting short stories that you write, or maybe you just like writing stories and want to show them to the world, let me know by commenting on this post and then check back here soon, I've had the greatest idea.

Similarly, if you feel like contributing to what I hope will become a massive blog for anything: new pictures you've found, quotes, journal entries, photos you've taken, whatever, post here too. That's another idea of mine.

But I have not abandoned Blogger! I've decided not to go on WordPress (on which I only have one good blog, which I might move over to Blogger, but it's very rude so I won't share with you the link), and Luke and I are carrying on just as well with Brickspace, and this month we're aiming to update the little-known Brickspace Staff Room blog, which is a private blog for all Brickspace staff to chat to each other on.

Speaking of Brickspace staff, we've had two NEW members since I last spoke to you lot! Well, one of them I've just invited, but good ol' Zack (aka Zack NewRight) has been on Brickspace for a while now, and he's already posted a fair amount of posts, and set up a Flickr Group for us. I can honestly say inviting him is the best thing I've ever done.

What else has happened? Well, not much. Brickspace has had more than double the amount of page hits than it had only a week ago, with this week's total coming to over several thousand. That's Zack's doing, I know it is. Such a great guy.

Like, hah.

Agh, what else? Oh yeah, it's Valentine's Day on saturday. Oh dear, not again. At the rate these things come around, you'd think they were an annual event.

AND I've been to see three movies in the past, er...two weeks. Slumdog Millionair (seven BATFAs? That's insane. You don't deserve that, Mr. Boyle), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (It deserved to have only one BAFTA. Let's hope it doesn't do as well at the Oscars), and Valkyrie (This one was actually good. And Tom Cruise gets shot at the end. Never seen that before).

Next up... nothing! Well, words, obviously. Hey look, if you're having trouble comprehending other dimensions, read this great explanation:

Have you ever considered how a four-dimensional being would appear to you if it suddenly came into your room?

I think they would resemble flesh-colored balloons constantly changing in size. We would see disconnected blobs of flesh, some attached to claws, teeth, lips, eyes, or hair. Let me tell you why.

Think of it this way. Consider a two-dimensional world resembling a sheet of paper. How would you appear to the inhabitants of such a world if you tried to interact with with them? The 2-D creatures would only see cross-sections of you as you intersected their universe. Your finger would look like a flat disc that grew in size as you pushed it through their world. Your five fingers might looked like five separate circles. They would just see irregular shapes with skin boundaries as you entered their world. Similarly, a hyperbeing who lived in the fourth dimension would have a cross-section in our space that looked liked a bunch of skin blobs.

A 4-D being would be a god to us. It would see everything in our world. It could even look inside your stomach and remove your breakfast without cutting through your skin, just like you could remove a dot inside a circle by moving it up into the third dimension, perpendicular to the circle, without breaking the circle.

A hyperbeing can effortlessly remove things before your very eyes, giving you the impression that the objects simply disappeared. The hyperbeing can also see inside any 3-D object or life form, and if necessary remove anything from inside. The being can look inside our intestines, or remove a tumor from our brain without ever cutting through the skin. A pair of gloves can be easily transformed into two left or two right gloves. And 3-D knots fall apart in the hands of a hyperbeing, much as a 2-D knot (a loop of string lying on a plane) can easily be undone by a 3-D being simply by lifting the end of the loop up into the third dimension.

What else have I been up to? Oh yeah, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp #5 is coming very soon (well, Valentine's Day - I just couldn't leave it alone completely, could I?), so look out at Jåm .

I will be doing loads more Lego building over half-term so keeps yours eyes peeled, including, if I FINALLY get Photoshop onto my computer, The Instability (short story by Isaac Asimov), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (well, I have the Indy hat now, so you can't blame me), that scene in Mary Poppins with the lady feeding the pigeons (don't ask why, It's some sort of subconscious urge I have), and many more MOCs and all that (maybe another Asimov short story - the one with the man who reverses parity using a machine, can't remember what it's called, I'll look it up) (and I'll try a better Valentine's Day one than the one that's currently on my Flickr account, that one makes me cringe).

Please note this blog has sadly died (on 1/1/12). You can still read all the posts etc, but I have moved my work/links/portfolio to wndalton.com

My name is John. This is my blog.

On JOHNSPACE you can find posts on a plethora of topics, though design, art, typography and Denmark are the usual suspects. I also post movie reviews, chat about my spectacularly uninteresting life and show you guys the latest stuff I've created. Enjoy!

Last year I did a 365-day blogging project. Check out the Crap Filter for its best posts.

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If you've been affected by any topics on this blog, then you get affected real easily. Try to toughen up, mate. The world's a grim place - buckle up and dry those tears of "he talked about design, boo hoo". Shit happens.